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LaTeX as a whole is intimidating, but the core that you need to know to get started is actually pretty simple. I could teach it to you in about an hour. That b
by Wilduck 14y ago
LaTeX as a whole is intimidating, but the core that you need to know to get started is actually pretty simple. I could teach it to you in about an hour.
That being said, I've never seen a written introduction that I would consider satisfactory. If you have a friend who knows LaTeX ask them to sit down with you and show you how to write a paper that includes headings, subheadings, figures, tables and some math equations. It might take an hour or two, but you'll then know more than enough to write basic documents, and google for anything else.
As for LyX, I've played with it, and I strongly prefer using LaTeX in emacs. Mostly because I like that my source document and the typeset document are separate.
- narcissus 14y agoInteresting... I might take another go at it then. To be honest, the playing around I did with LyX made me think that it would be fine for what I was looking for, which was essentially "nicely formatted books", where "books" was a definite over-exaggeration of what I can truly expect the outcome to be. I can appreciate the separation that you are going for, but I also have to wonder how much time you spend in LaTeX? If I were writing something that was worthy of LaTeX, it would probably average to less than an hour a week. I'm not sure if the effort is worth it for me. Again, to be completely honest. Whereas if I was doing a lot of writing that I expect to be read, I could imagine the investment being worth it. I look at like the way I looked at HTML formatting: I knew how to do the markup, but the WYSIWYG editors got me where I needed a lot faster. Having said that, I now find myself handcoding divs and spans and then using more CSS... so maybe that is the argument I need to read up on it! Well, lots to think about anyway. Thanks!